The next Napster? Copyright questions as 3D printing comes of age

The digital revolution made it simple to digitize and share media; the 3D …

The Penrose Triangle is as elegant as it is impossible—much like M.C. Escher’s drawings, it presents a two-dimensional illusion that the eye interprets as three-dimensional. The task of effectively creating this illusion in three dimensions, without resorting to hidden openings or gimmicky twists, seemed daunting until a Netherlands-based designer named Ulrich Schwanitz succeeded in printing the object recently. But Schwanitz, who posted a YouTube video of his design achievement in action, wouldn’t share his secret with the world. Instead, he made his “impossible triangle” available for purchase through Shapeways, a company that fabricates custom 3D designs, for $70.

Within weeks of Schwanitz’s “discovery,” however, a 3D modeler (and former Shapeways intern) named Artur Tchoukanov watched the video and figured out how to recreate the shape. He then uploaded instructions to Thingiverse, an open-source repository of 3D models and content. BoingBoing picked up the story (well, part of it), and “wrongly” credited Tchoukanov as the initial creator of the object.

The same day the story ran, Schwanitz sent Thingiverse a DMCA takedown notice and demanded that the site remove Tchoukanov’s design (and a related one) because it allegedly infringed Schwanitz’s copyright. Although the copyright claim was questionable at best—was Schwanitz asserting copyright in the 3D design file, the image, or the structure itself?—Thingiverse nevertheless complied with the notice and removed the offending designs.

The Penrose triangle

“For better or worse,” Thingiverse founder Bre Pettis wrote on the site’s blog, “we’ve hit a milestone in the history of digital fabrication.”

A few days later, after coming under Internet scrutiny, Schwanitz rescinded his DMCA complaint and promised to release his shape into the public domain. But the damage was done. As Cory Doctorow eloquently put it, Schwanitz “became the inventor of something much more substantial than a 3D Penrose Triangle—he became the inventor of copyright threats over open 3D repositories.”

Schwanitz’s DMCA takedown notice was indeed a milestone for Thingiverse, which had operated free of any public accusations of patent or copyright infringement since it was founded. As a result of the incident, Thingiverse updated its legal page with DMCA language. But the complaint spoke to something broader, and far more significant for 3D printing as a new technology: Schwanitz’s takedown was the first shot in the next theater of the intellectual property (IP) wars. It was also the first formal attempt to apply copyright law to regulate content on a 3D printing repository of any kind.

While Ars readers have enjoyed great coverage of 3D printing-related topics, the general public still isn't familiar with the technology. Indeed, many of my legal colleagues were baffled as I explained how any physical object can now be scanned to generate a CAD (computer-aided design) file and later recreated—anywhere, anytime—using a 3D printer. All agreed that such a technology would have unprecedented implications for intellectual property law (and vice versa).

As with all technology, as 3D printing becomes simpler, more powerful, and more common, it will catch the eyes of more lawyers, regulators, and, of course, individual designers like Ulrich Schwanitz. And that will mean conflict. Here's a primer on some of the key legal issues that will frame the upcoming battles.

A disruptor like no other

Though still in its infancy, personal 3D printing technology already shows the same disruptive potential as the original printing press. Just as moveable type spread across Europe and democratized knowledge, the proliferation of 3D printers eventually promises to democratize creation. Broken dishwasher part? Download the relevant CAD file and print it out in plastic. While Amazon made trips to the store seem dated, 3D printing will make ordering (some) things online feel positively quaint.

Most people think of “printing” as a strictly 2D affair, but 3D printing works much like its 2D cousin, the inkjet printer, though it builds up a succession of layers to form its objects. Such printers can cost between thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars (a build-it-yourself model, the RepRap, can be assembled for a few hundred bucks).

The fabrication process begins with a 3D design file, created from scratch or drawn from a 3D scan of an object. Software deconstructs the 3D image into a series of 2D cross-sectional slices and the printer deposits layers of material, typically plastic or metal, one atop the other in the shape of each 2D slice. The layers are fused, and the fabricated object is treated and hardened.

Because 3D printers don’t need to carve material from preexisting blocks (as in sculpture), the process allows for elaborate and visuallystunning shapes to be created in a matter of hours with no manual labor. The size of these shapes is only limited by the size of the printer making them—heck, combine a big enough one with a space probe and you’re halfway to Von Neumann technology.

All that is well and good, but as Thingiverse recently discovered, any technology that allows users to digitize and replicate objects is bound to have some IP implications. And it’s precisely because of its potential as a game changer that 3D printing presents challenging legal questions best addressed before the technology becomes ubiquitous.

Gutenberg didn’t have to worry much about intellectual property laws, but he had to compete with an array of other legal and societal challenges to his invention. Eventually copyright, a novel concept in the 16th century, emerged as a means to regulate Gutenberg’s disruptive technology. 3D printing is especially intriguing from a legal perspective because, like the printing press, it has broad implications for the existing legal regime (including all three areas of IP - patent, copyright, and trademark), but it also presents issues that may warrant broad changes to existing law—or require new laws entirely.

147 Reader Comments

Yes, let's drum up the FUD about 3D printing now with faniciful remarks about printing jewelry and ignore reality.

Besides, the idea isn't that IP will be made worthless. The idea is the working class is fed up with the IP developing class which believes they only need to work a 40 hour week once to profit infinitely from the result.

If you wish to argue that IP developers like songwriters, engineers, programmers and the such then you are ignoring their choices in employers. Just because the individual developer of a piece of IP may not live forever off it's copyright, their are plenty of entities to go around who do think they have a right to profit forever from a singular work. Refer to the situation with classical Russian music and literature going back into copyright at the moment.

The creator did their work and they are dead. But someone thinks it's their place to have right to make money off these things simply for applying for the rights at an office?

Let's rethink IP folks. You'll figure out why so many people have no moral issue with piracy and only avoid it when FUD is the motivator.

As someone who worked in the 3D / animation field, you're trying to ruin an entire art field. A 3D drawing of an existing object is reverse engineering. It is in fact legally protected.

Also, calling Gutenberg's technology "disruptive" is about as oligarchical as you can get. Please, be more obvious in how you insult us poor peasants. Just call us revolting. We just might be soon enough.

So one guy devises a specific method to print an object. It's an object he did not invent or imagine himself; he merely came up with one way to fabricate it in physical form.

Another person, upon observing the object being created, figures out a method to print the same object. Somehow, sharing this information (which he came up with on his own, apparently without seeing the actual file made by guy #1) with other people provokes a DMCA complaint.

The creation of the great medieval cathedrals, the King James Bible, and numerous other constructs was the result of years of work by multitudes of people; all without the benefit of copyright, patent, or trademark laws in the modern form. There may be sorts of creativity or creative output which depend on specific sorts of laws, but if there are also sorts which are inhibited by those laws, we're going to need a much more detailed discussion to get very far.

Note that I certainly do not advocate the abolition of copyright, patent, or trademark laws. I would advocate their reform if it weren't a manifest waste of everyone's time.

They were constructed using trade secrets held by the various guilds. Guilds did not exchange ideas with other trades & many of their secrets died when the Masters who knew the secrets did not pass on the knowledge.

IP protection is a much better system as the knowledge can be recovered even if everyone who knows the technique dies. The techniques are also open to examination by craftsmen in unrelated fields who may be able to use the knowledge under IP law. Under trade secret law, they may not even be aware the technique exists let alone that they may be able to apply the knowledge in their own field.

An example is Damascus steel. It was a lost art until a few years ago when a metallurgist examined a broken blade and discovered the forgotten secret of this famous steel. Another example is the Samurai sword. A (trade secret) coating was used to selectively temper the blade. No one alive today knows what to make that coating from or how to apply it. As a secret it was passed from master to apprentice until the last master died without passing on the secret. What it did has been reverse engineered...how it was done has been reverse engineered...the secret coating remains a mystery.

To the guy that said IP is from an era of kingdoms: That's just plainly factually incorrect. IP was developed in the 1700s to deal with the printing press and fleshed out in the 1800s to deal with the industrial revolution. The fact is that Intellectual Property DOES foster innovation and creativity, not stifle it-- as so many on here claim. In its current state, it is not a perfect system; abuses do exist. There is no reason to throw the proverbial baby out with the putrid RightHaven bathwater.

It is from the era of kingdoms. The first patent statute, the Statute of Monopolies, was actually reducing legal monopolies from "whatever the reigning monarch wanted however they wanted" to "new, novel inventions for a limited time." Copyright, the first modern rendition of which came from the Statute of Anne, was a reduction of "letting one publisher maintain a monopoly on all printing" to "granting limited monopolies to authors." This was less backwards than the previous systems, but not as progressive as getting rid of these monopolies altogether.

Compared to a free market economy, IP gets soundly defeated. However, IP proponents like to point at the last few hundred years as a counterexample, without controlling for the existing rate of technological growth and other factors.

Fritzr wrote:

IP protection is a much better system as the knowledge can be recovered even if everyone who knows the technique dies. The techniques are also open to examination by craftsmen in unrelated fields who may be able to use the knowledge under IP law. Under trade secret law, they may not even be aware the technique exists let alone that they may be able to apply the knowledge in their own field.

You are arguing about a system that doesn't exist. Trade secrets are still around. and are generally more of a technical manner than a legal one (the legal aspects are mostly related to contracts like NDAs). If someone concludes they can economically exploit something for more than 20 years without the secret behind it being known to an effective extent, they will not seek a patent because a trade secret is better. Worse yet, the most valuable patent isn't the one that advances the field the most, but rather the one that presents the biggest roadblock to competitors.

Great article, good observations. I'd like to add some perspective the discussion. Copyright and patents are ONE answer to a bigger question: How do we structure the provisioning of goods in society? Obviously, there are other answers possible, but the law is very slow to change and historically, for intellectual property (IP), has only gone in the direction of being MORE restrictive.

It is important not to forget why society grants intellectual monopolies (a monopoly better covers what IP really is). While policymakers are influenced strongly by those who profit from intellectual monopolies, there used to be a valid reason for society to accept these artificial monopolies on replicating ideas and designs. The rationale used to be: if inventors would not have the profit driven incentive, these inventions would not be created. This dilemma is more and more becoming a false dilemma (I recommend Glyn Moody's talk on the subject [1] also, [2] for a scientific review of the subject). Today, innovation is becoming democratized, even more so by 3D printers and other digital fabrication technologies. Anyone with internet access and an idea can design an innovation and print it in 3D on an affordable machine such as an Ultimaker or have Shapeways or Ponoko make it for them. Because the design is digital, groups can collaboratively create better designs. Moreover, it scales better than an R&D department: in the RepRap community about 200 full time equivalents are spent, voluntarily, to make a better 3D printer that can print itself. These are already more man-hours worked than the biggest player in the 3D printer industry could afford. But the big difference is: the 200 FTE's in the RepRap community are contributed by thousands of different individuals instead of a small team that works full-time [3]. Creativity, and the innovation that flows from it, works best when a heterogenous population of passionate individuals interact. Moreover, a big group that can openly discuss problems has access to a much broader set of knowledge. This is the reason why communities such as Thingiverse works so well and why licenses that embrace the freedom to copy and derive are important for innovation to flourish. This is what is called social production, an alternative to firm and market based production. In social production public good aspect is preserved.

We've been led to believe we're dependent on those who invent and produce on our behalf, while at the same time the tools to invent and produce are increasingly within our reach. In many cases, the user has the potential to create a better product [4], because it can be tailored to his/her needs instead that of the average wishes of a market segment that has a profit expectation. In markets with varied needs, there is under-provisioning because the tools or rights to derive were not available (one example of "market failure"). Nowadays, preserving these freedoms becomes more important to stimulate innovation than to restrict the flow of knowledge in favor of exclusive right holders. Those who sit on their knowledge in order to exploit it, will never improve it as fast as those who share, interact and mingle their knowledge with others. The same goes for design knowledge and we're missing out on a lot of design improvements.

Most objects made by manufacturers were originally developed by users, but it is not apparent where manufacturers get their inspiration from. In many industries, there is a systemic bias to think manufacturers are in most cases the source of innovation [5]. In many cases the most appropriate role of manufacturers is that of actual manufacturing, not invention.

We need to reconsider the role of intellectual property and to identify and counter policy bias that is suboptimal in terms of provisioning of goods in society (see also [6]). The role of governments should always be to preserve the flow of knowledge, not to promote ownership and the right to exclude for the sake private profit. If ideas are abundant when protection is not offered, why do we want to create all this friction? The fashion industry is an example where virtually no protection is available [7]. Any disruptive technology has led to a battle between old industries that want to maintain their outdated business models. The problem is that they are organized in influencing policy and even public opinion (to copy is to steal!). We should not expect policymakers to fully understand the non-rival nature of digital goods until we use it to create increasingly valuable alternatives. The emerging field of collaborative free and open design is a great example to enlighten them (details are in [3]).

[1] Glyn Moody on Intellectual Monopolies: http://vimeo.com/21188827[2] Benkler, Y. The Wealth of Networks, Yale University Press, 2006: "By lowering the capital costs required for effective individual action, these technologies have allowed various provisioning problems to be structured in forms amenable to decentralized production based on social relations, rather than through markets or hierarchies."[3] E. de Bruijn, On the viability of the Open Source Development model for the design of physical objects, from: http://bit.ly/ErikOSHW 2010[4] Chapter 5: "Users low cost innovation niches" http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books/DI/Chapter5.pdf[5] E. von Hippel, Sources of Innovation by Eric von Hippel - Oxford University Press, 1988Download courtesy of OUP at http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www[6] von Hippel, E. and Jong, J. P. J. D. (2010). Open, distributed and user-centered: Towardsa paradigm shift in innovation policy[7] http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakle ... lture.html

The creation of the great medieval cathedrals, the King James Bible, and numerous other constructs was the result of years of work by multitudes of people; all without the benefit of copyright, patent, or trademark laws in the modern form. There may be sorts of creativity or creative output which depend on specific sorts of laws, but if there are also sorts which are inhibited by those laws, we're going to need a much more detailed discussion to get very far.

Note that I certainly do not advocate the abolition of copyright, patent, or trademark laws. I would advocate their reform if it weren't a manifest waste of everyone's time.

They were constructed using trade secrets held by the various guilds. Guilds did not exchange ideas with other trades & many of their secrets died when the Masters who knew the secrets did not pass on the knowledge.

IP protection is a much better system as the knowledge can be recovered even if everyone who knows the technique dies.

Only if the person who knew the technique applied for a patent, or copyrighted it. If you're arguing that the existence of patent and copyright law increases the probability that people will write stuff down, you're making a circular argument, as the very justification for having those laws (in the USA) is as an incentive for people to publish. As I asked Volt-aire, I'll ask you: do you have any evidence that copyright laws, or specific aspects of copyright laws have had specific benefits for society?

Or are we just to wave our hands and say 'we've got more stuff now than before, it must have been the IP'?

Quote:

An example is Damascus steel. It was a lost art until a few years ago when a metallurgist examined a broken blade and discovered the forgotten secret of this famous steel.

As I read it, the 'secret' to Damascus steel was approx. 0.0001% manganese in the 'wootz' (blanks coming from the smelter). That Manganese gave the steel it's properties, and Damascus steel was lost very shortly after smelting ceased at the site in India which had the appropriate Manganese content to the ore.

If that's right (and that's a big 'if'; I've read a handful of different stories about how Damascus steel was 'really' formed over the years, and all have been extremely speculative), then IP law would not, could not have saved the 'secret' of Damascus steel from being lost. That's because it wasn't until the 19th century that anyone had any idea what Manganese did when added to steel, and because nobody before the 20th century could possibly have detected the small amount of Manganese in the ore in the first place.

Anyway; I'm (still) not arguing against copyright, patent, and trademark laws. I'm asking questions about how we should go about forming them. If we're to form them based on a myth of property rights, then they're going to look radically different than if we form them based on economic costs and benefits. If we're going to take the US Constitution seriously, they're going to look very different than if we took Jack Valente's 'infinity minus one day' seriously.

The article gets some important legal facts wrong. That tea set and that chair design is *not* copyrightable. They may be patentable; by utility and/or design patents. As a general guideline, anything eliigible for a design patent is not eligible for copyright. The article's premise that 3D printing will enable wholesale copyright infringement of everyday objects is overreaching, as most of those objects don't have a copyright.

The article is incorrect when it states that the "artistic" expression in a chair is copyrighted. The Copright Act defines a pretty narrow list of things that are subject to copyright. Tea pots and chairs are both "Useful Articles" under the Act, and explicitly excluded from copyright protection. Now, if the chair or teapot has a distinctive pattern or logo on it, that can exist separate from the article itself (say, printed on paper), and yes, that pattern is copyrightable. But the design of the article itself is not. As someone else noted, that best example of this is fashion: clothes, being useful articles, are copied routinely.

As for the shape discussed at the beginning of the article, it would probably be covered under the Copyright Act as a "sculptural work", as it looks like it was an purely an artistic expression, with no utilitarian value. So creating a list of instructions to duplicate it would then be copyright infringement. Note however that if the object was not copyrightable, then the lsit of instructions, independently created, bears no infringement - it is the classic "clean room" technique used often to get around software copyrights (e.g., those that enabled the first IBM clones by developing copyright-free BIOS's).

The point to remember is that most utilitarian articles of every life, be they furniture, clothes, the latest car design, etc., are not subject to copyright, and may be copied by competitors at will.

Finally, with regards to some useful articles, it is very, very rarely the case that some of them may be subject to a type of Trademark IP protection called "Trade Dress". This is the case where it can be shown that, for example, a chair design is so distinctive and so much associated with a particular designer, that it in effect serves as the "calling card" for the designer in question. It is a very high legal bar to meet, though.

Can we quantify the amount, or ways in which intellectual property laws have fostered innovation? Can we identify specific ways in which those laws have hampered innovation and creativity and separate them from the ways in which they have fostered innovation?

No. But we can look historically and point out that the countries in the early modern period that had robust IP laws were more economically successful than those without. Of course, those countries also had larger government involvement in all areas- fostering central banking, better free trade policies, etc. But still.

But still... what? How do we judge whether or not the copyright protections we have today are one whit better for society than those which we (the US) had in 1900 if all we can do is wave our hands vaguely and say 'but still'?

AFAICT, 'but still' leads us directly to the conclusion that additional copyright protections are always warranted, and always good for society, given that we've been adding copyright protections to society for the past 200 years or so, and look how well things have gone. This is clearly an inadequate argument.

Volt-aire wrote:

hpsgrad wrote:

The creation of the great medieval cathedrals, the King James Bible, and numerous other constructs was the result of years of work by multitudes of people; all without the benefit of copyright, patent, or trademark laws in the modern form. There may be sorts of creativity or creative output which depend on specific sorts of laws, but if there are also sorts which are inhibited by those laws, we're going to need a much more detailed discussion to get very far.

All of those were in a totally different, pre-modern mode of production. Are you really advocating a return to an economy based on everyone starving so that the Bishop may have his Cathedral?

Not at all. I'm replying to your claim about Intel's Sandy Bridge, and your question about whether or not we think that this, or other, expensive and complicated things would ever get created without IP. By inspection, they have. Such expensive and complicated things might not get created in the 'right' way, or perhaps not as often, under some different set of rules governing creative works, but they most certainly will be created.

Equally to the point, 3D printing has the potential to create a totally different, post-modern mode of production. Why should we cripple this new new mode of production in an attempt to protect the current one?

Volt-aire wrote:

hpsgrad wrote:

With, or without, IP, the larger firm just buys them because it's easier to buy the tooling and skills to make the product than it is to replicate them. What's different in terms of the outcome?

The difference is that with IP, the smaller firm profits. In the tech and biotech worlds, startups are constantly created solely to generate enough IP to sell to someone able to use it. The original investors create a new start-up. How is this bad for anyone? In a world without IP, the investors lose all their money because the larger company pays nothing.

Your original claim was that without IP there is no reason for the smaller firm to make anything. I replied by pointing out that whether that smaller firm gets copied (and driven out of business) or bought out, the result is the same: they have no incentive to actually make anything. They have different incentives in the world with and without IP protections, that's true, and potentially interesting, but not obviously relevant to a discussion about what we should do in the face of 3D-printing.

Also, I've also told you several times that I'm not advocating the abolition of IP laws. Why do you think that a discussion of the problems of a world without them is relevant to my comments?

Volt-aire wrote:

hpsgrad wrote:

Are you seriously arguing that products like the Hyosung GT650 should be barred from the marketplace because of their obvious resemblance to other, earlier, products (the 1st generation Suzuki SV650, in this case)? How similar do things have to be before your threshold for protection is crossed?

I'm seriously arguing that you shouldn't be able to download the plans to the Hyosung GT650 and produce one in my living room. The threshold of protection for industrial products is a debate that's been going on since the first patent was created, and fortunately there's a huge corpus of law to deal with it, again dealt with by numerous courts on a case-by-case basis. That's not what's at issue. What's at issue is the novel applications and problems generated by technology that can scan a product, generate an exact plan for it, and create an exact replica.

Today, I can take apart my motorcycle, measure every part, draw up blue-prints, and then go to a machine shop and either make the parts myself, or have someone else make the parts for me. Why are changes to my costs for doing these things a justification for prohibiting those things?

Make no mistake, you're going to have to prohibit those things if you are seriously arguing that I shouldn't be able to download the plans to that GT650 and make one in my living room. Because the difference between me downloading the plans and my making them myself is only a difference in cost, not in who has the rights to produce the machine, nor in who gets compensated when I make my copy. Right now reverse-engineering is legal, and making copies of physical objects is also legal, with a few small exceptions for stuff covered by copyright, patent and trademark law (that is, exceptions which would be circular if you were to use them to justify changing the laws WRT the rest of physical objects).

At the end of it all, the sense I get from your position is that the 'problem' represented by 3D printing is the possibility that it would become too easy to make stuff, and that we must prevent this. This is a bizarre start to an argument, IMO. I hope that you do not see the ease of copying and duplicating material objects as a significant criterion for the strength of protections required for people who manufacture those objects.

Alternatively, you might be afraid that 3D-printing has the potential to make it too easy to make stuff, and that as a result, nobody would bother to create new, better, and genuinely creative things. Again, I think that this is absolutely insane. The thought that people would stop making stuff because it's too easy to make stuff is simply bizarre.

I'm hoping that I'm just getting the wrong impression about your argument, and that you can clarify it for us.

I welcome the day when commodities are taken out of the hands of the "rightsholders" and put into the hands of the average person.

We must democratize society and the workplace in order to get rid of these draconian laws, and as this technology advances, soon the "workplace" will be in our own homes. People produce and share their own commodities, or plans to make commodities, I see public, free (or for a small fee to pay for material) print shops to print what you want or what you need.

This is the future we need to embrace, it is much more extravagant than the profit driven, IP obsessed (and therefore, inherently by design, technologically less advanced) future we seem to be headed.

This article is a three page expose on why we should give up on the notion of IP. It won't be too long before you cannot invent ANYTHING. Everything will be trademarked, copyrighted, or patented, and then what. Am I going to have to get a license because some widget in something I came up with on my own resembles something someone else has a design patent on?

I don't know. I know that some balance has to be struck, but I think as a world we'd probably be better off letting these technologies disrupt the existing order, and let the chips fall where they may, than prop up a four hundred year old regime that was never designed to handle the issues that 3D printing will bring.

If we do keep IP around as a viable concept, we need to do something about the time limits. These laws were originally put in place to stimulate creativity, and have instead become impediments. I would be far less concerned if copyright had some sort of reasonable limit, it doesn't. Don't get me started on patents. If they allowed a patent for a swing to get through despite being both obvious and having centuries of prior art, I don't have any faith in their ability to be an honest broker in the upcoming IP storm.

Except if you make actually creating IP worthless (because anyone can copy it freely), then what is the motivation for someone to professionally create interesting IP? Eventually everyone will be copying, but who will they copy?

I agree the law needs reform and we need perhaps a new way of thinking, but there is NO way we don't need to protect the ideas people come up with. Specialization, and the benefits of having people make professions of tasks is the thing that made us successful as a civilization. If we allow people to treat ideas as basically worthless, fewer people will make a living of thinking up new things.People will of course continue to make art and come up with cool shit as a hobby, but while some really interesting stuff comes from hobbyists, no polished products do.

I also fail to see how 3D printers are really mixing things up. CAD and 3D files have always been copyrighted work, just as a picture, a text or a piece of graphic design is. Why wouldn't it be?Turbosquid and the like have been selling 3D CAD ressources for ages, and of COURSE those are copyrighted. Whether you print the resulting 3D or just use it in a visualization project makes no difference that I can see.Sure the former has farther reaching consequences since copyright infringement can now come to the physical world, but legally it's not much different. I don't want anyone copying the 3D work I've done for their own visualizations and animations anymore than I want anyone printing physical copies and selling. In either case they are taking my work without my consent.

In the case of Erik De Bruijn, he naturally has a copyright on the 3D model he created, and might have had copyright on the shape in general. Of course, he didn't invent the Penrose Triangle, so only the specific 3D work he did could probably be copyrighted. I'm not sure (also IANAL) whether the method he used in the video for creating it (i.e. the specific way he built his 3D model) is really specific enough that it could be copyrighted. It's more akin to me duplicating an M.C. Escher drawing by hand and claiming copyright of it.

L.

mlubrov stated my thoughts nearly verbatim.

As for your reply, all I really have to say about it is haven't you heard the saying that necessity is the mother of invention? Abolishing the copyright and patent systems could do double duty to help with progress. It would put an end to the stifling of innovation brought on by patent trolls and the like. It would also cut down on the absurd copy-cats (instead of having 100 variations of the same thing that all aren't really any better and are occasionally worse, you end up with exact copies of the best version and the only deviations are brought on when something better comes up). Just because people aren't getting rich for it, doesn't mean people wont still invent entirely out of necessity or even for their own amusement. It's not unusual for a bright and talented novice to shy away from creative works because the legal red tape is just too much of a hurdle.

The problem with copy write laws is they don't really account for the copy write owner possibly being the thief. Many of us believe the escalation of these laws is more about creating a new type of law industry also that pretty much makes its money off settlements in a pattern that has evolved into what is functionally legalized extortion. They pick people, tell them they need to pay several grand in settlement fees or go to court and get reemed for the rest of their lives. They have the crucified individuals even under questionable cases to show as examples so yes these guys are raking in the cash and the original artist isn't seeing a dime of it. In the music industry also there is a question of controlled access to the public ear. One of the things that happened with Napster just before the stuff hit the fan was it was creating a venue for promoting new artist who had not gone though the screening of the large corporate music industry. I believe that actually was the last straw for any tolerance for sharing.

Disney can be credited also for pushing for changes to copy write laws that made it so they can extend ownership and restriction indefinitely. Have a memory of some movie you didn't want to buy but were just going to rent? Many of them never get that far and some are removed from the shelves all together. That's not exactly protection for the creator of those movies, that was not the original intention of copy write also. We have come to a point where a historical set of laws that was intended to encourage new artist is now about the opposite.

On the other side of the coin, I have a BFA in fine art so I'm not supportive of stealing the work of others, I had enough problem learning that anything I created and submitted in college was actually the property of the school and not mine. That being said though at what point is copy write about protecting artist and at what point is it just about protecting industry's write to own just about everything. The artist who created the word love with the words stacked in blocks of 4 on two levels for example never got the benefit of his work being all over posters and t shirts because it was not in fact that person who gained the copy write. Visual art theft is going on all the time online. Just take a look at issues surrounding the Deviant Art site over the years. Facebook has tons of "borrowed" art work from sources that the borrowers never site or ask permission from because too often you can simply copy an image and then paste it into a digital manipulation program. A change to web site behavior might be more helpful to actual artist than extending copy write's legal power.

The laws need to be reviewed for sure but right now I don't think we have the people in legislature to give honest or ethical decisions. There needs to be a method in place for establishment of the actual creator of work and there isn't, what we have is the power of contracts and arguably it has the backing of the first supreme court ruling ever establishing that a contract is a contract, however we are living in a ripe age of unreasonable contracts also. So adding visual to the long arm of copy write as things stand now is IMO unwise.

Sigh. Replicators in Star Trek is coming and we have to think about legal ramifications first.

This is the sad reality brought about by the unwavering dedication to capitalism that we have here in the US (as well as some other nations). Star Trek is without doubt a very well put together form of socialism, and it works (within the fictional universe of course), but even if we could emulate it to that level of perfection the bottom line is despite the value to mankind we would fight an uphill battle just because the unwashed masses have been brainwashed into thinking that Capitalism=good, Socialism=bad.

You can't just banish capitalism. It's like trying to ban speculation but on a larger scale. For example: everybody "speculates" on the price of gasoline when they pass up this station to see what the price is at the next one. (there's probably an app for that nowadays but that's not the point, that just makes you a better speculator.)

Which is really similar to your banish capitalism idea. Frankly, I think your trolling but... If you try to banish capitalism how are you going to do that? Remove all currency, that won't work people will just use some ad-hoc currency, gold/silver/cigarettes/whatever. And how will you get services without money, I'm guessing use the gov't to force people to work but then how do you decide who does what etc? And before you start down the but I won't need any of that if I have an automated transportation system and a 3d printer for stuff, well what about food, energy, living space and so on. You haven't magically solved those problems with tech even if you could solve this one. So ya you're just performing an elaborate form of mental masturbation at best or trolling.

Capitalism is about more then simply trade between two people. It is about someone having, or finding some source of capital or fund the production of objects specifically to sell them on rather then use some and sell the rest.

If you have materials for 5 chairs, but sell only 1 because your going to use the other 4 yourself then your just trading your excess. Now if you sell all 5, especially if you yourself did not put them together but hired someone else to do so (pocketing the difference between the persons wage and the sales price of the chairs), then your being a capitalist.

This is what came out of the industrial revolution, when people discovered they could outperform manual looms and such by attaching a steam engine. Previously people would weave primarily for their own use, and sell whatever excess to get stuff they could not make or gather themselves. Now one could run the loom as long as one kept the system fed with coal and thread, and sell it all.

And this is also different from merchants, as they basically moves excess production around. someone had excess meat, and someone else had excess cloth? The merchant would step in between the two and handle the transaction at each end. The suppliers may not even know of each others existence.

So far, most of the comments concern the IP aspects, but let's look at the practical ones.

I am a machinist, having done blacksmithing, welding, and work on lathes and milling machines. And I have worked in IP in photography and graphics arts. I am seriously considering getting one of these 3D printers. So let's look at the practical aspects.

Who is going to mistake a 4" model of a chair made in plastic for the real one made in steel, wood and fabric? Really! A good photograph looks more realistic than those models. Does anyone mistaken a photograph for the real object? Unless a copyright holder designs a model specifically for desktop modeling in a 3D printer, they really don't have to worry about being ripped off because these one-off 3D prints are not competing against the real thing.

As for counterfeiters, those models designed for replication on little desktop 3D printers are practically useless. What they need are designs that can be molded and spit out at high speeds, or manufactured on the cheap in 3rd world sweatshops. There are already IP laws on the books for these cases, do we need new ones?

As a photographer, I do not have a printer, as the professional printers have equipment to make the quality that I want at a far lower price than what it would cost me for my low volume output if I did in in house. So for the more advanced forms of 3D printing, particularly as pertains to metal sintering, unless there are unexpected reductions of costs in orders of magnitude, those printers are not coming to your home. The home 3D printers will remain in the same realm as ink-jet printers: low-end but suitable for many applications.

3D printing will never replace other means of manufacturing. Even in metal, sintered metal that comes from 3D printing, has different properties than machined or cast metals, and is not suitable for all uses. At present, it is also more expensive, often by quite a bit, for most products. And plastics don't work for many applications. So I look at getting a home 3D printer as a supplement, not a replacement, for the store, forge, welder, lathe and milling machines.

In closing: one time my brother-in-law saw me setting up a small jig to sharpen a drill bit. He commented what a waste of time and effort for such a cheap item. At the company where he worked, they bought drill bits by the gross and simply trashed them when they got dull. My answer was that I use drill bits so sparingly that it was not cost effective for me to buy drill bits by the gross, and when one bit got dull, it took less time to sharpen it myself than to go to the hardware store to buy a replacement. So I view home 3D printing similarly: good for one-off or short run products, not as a replacement for purchasing high volume items.

Thing about high volume tho is that beyond the basics, most of the high volume comes from either reaching a global market or heavy advertisement to get people interested in stuff they had not considered a "need" before.

I'm a little mixed on this. This to me is a great innovation and a very useful tool for the industry. However, I get the feeling that a lot of jobs such as factory work will be lost, especially when home 3D printing becomes more feasible. A lot of industry such as the Anime/Manga industry rely a lot on merchandise. This would pretty much cut a large revenue stream. Hopefully, the entertainment find a not dickish way to work around this. I'm still concerned for the blue collar.

I regret how insane humans are. We are looking at a technology that could actually make some positive change in the world by allowing low cost manufacturing of repair parts and complete mechanisms and we are talking about how that could affect some board game companies. Really?

This technology isn't new. It's only newly accessible to common people. There are hundreds of factories in China producing knock off products right now. Nothing has stopped them. Just saying is all.

I regret how insane humans are. We are looking at a technology that could actually make some positive change in the world by allowing low cost manufacturing of repair parts and complete mechanisms and we are talking about how that could affect some board game companies. Really?

This technology isn't new. It's only newly accessible to common people. There are hundreds of factories in China producing knock off products right now. Nothing has stopped them. Just saying is all.

Right, but when it's cheap technology + low inhibitions + large mass of people then "=" is going to be far more impressive than before.

Sigh. Replicators in Star Trek is coming and we have to think about legal ramifications first.

This is the sad reality brought about by the unwavering dedication to capitalism that we have here in the US (as well as some other nations). Star Trek is without doubt a very well put together form of socialism, and it works (within the fictional universe of course), but even if we could emulate it to that level of perfection the bottom line is despite the value to mankind we would fight an uphill battle just because the unwashed masses have been brainwashed into thinking that Capitalism=good, Socialism=bad.

You can't just banish capitalism. It's like trying to ban speculation but on a larger scale. For example: everybody "speculates" on the price of gasoline when they pass up this station to see what the price is at the next one. (there's probably an app for that nowadays but that's not the point, that just makes you a better speculator.)

Which is really similar to your banish capitalism idea. Frankly, I think your trolling but... If you try to banish capitalism how are you going to do that? Remove all currency, that won't work people will just use some ad-hoc currency, gold/silver/cigarettes/whatever. And how will you get services without money, I'm guessing use the gov't to force people to work but then how do you decide who does what etc? And before you start down the but I won't need any of that if I have an automated transportation system and a 3d printer for stuff, well what about food, energy, living space and so on. You haven't magically solved those problems with tech even if you could solve this one. So ya you're just performing an elaborate form of mental masturbation at best or trolling.

Actually Star Trek is not socialism, but a resource based economy. In a resource based economy, money doesn't exist and people would be able to fabricate anything they want, within the limits of planetary resources, be it materials available today or energy reserves available to build it.

When money does not exist, there will not be IP laws, patents, copyright concerns or any form of necessity for a few people to police resource access from many people as it would not make sense.

There will not be any talk about what you can afford. You just build it and you would in a few years entirely get rid of poverty, wealth inequality and most types of money induced crime because anyone would have access to technology that today is expensive.

Already today, you could demonstrate this through subsequent generations of the RepRap, which could help building parts for farming equipment, housings, watering systems, pumps or complicated parts with embedded electronics. Give this machine to a poor African farmer and a bit of education, and he's suddenly able to build complicated hardware or spare parts for cars, motorcycles and other apparatus. Let his neighbor see it too, and copy a RepRap for him. They would then already be starting their own resource based economy, where only the access to resources, their own ingenuity and the capabilities of the RepRap will set limitations for what they can do. Eventually, both farmers would be richer, not through money, but simply through having the power to not need to purchase things to survive.

Fabrication today is getting more and more automated. In a resource based economy, you would not need to concern yourself with losing your job to a robot, since you don't need money.

Having money does not make sense from the point of view of resources, as the value of money is decoupled from the availability of resources. It's coupled to the use of resources instead.

The use under monetary limitations involve limitations of human labor, time-to-market, how well the product can sell and what quality of materials you can afford. This also brings on planned obsolescence, crappy plastic in the cheap section of the supermarket, unsafe products, products that contain poisonous materials, products that are hard to recycle, products that are artificially expensive, and life-saving products that won't be distributed exactly where they are needed, because those in need can't pay for it.

Finally also products are produced far away from where they are used, wasting resources on transportation.

In a monetary based economy, this makes sense in a monetary perspective, but from a human and resource perspective, it's utterly crazy.

In a resource based economy, there is none of this. You are free to build products of the highest quality of available resources, because it doesn't make sense to make crap. Or you are free to build machines to build you even better products out of local resources.

How do you get there? I'm afraid the capitalist system would have to fail first and also, people would have to be aware of the alternative of resource based economy and how ridiculously many advantages there are in it, over the existing system.

Then, every one of the Earth's resources would have to be catalogued with the purpose of knowing where it is in unmined form, how much there is of it, and how to track where it is, if it has been mined. This is not much different from any company that manages inventory, but just happens on a global scale. Google could provide a "resource search engine". They seem to be pretty good at searching for things.

Finally, when enough people can get the concept of money out of their heads, they will simply start building things that make sense. There's no one to stop them from making a new Apollo program or Hoover Dam or whatever it takes to move the local populace to the next technological level.

There is an old man, Jacques Fresco, who came up with this concept many years ago and predicted much of what I read in this thread, which is that people will tend to see no other way than the presence of a monetary economy, being unaware that an alternative model exists.

Get rid of that idea that things must revolve around money. Get rid of money, and the rest falls into place automatically.

There may be another possible problem and this may come from the tax authorities. If too many people begin to manufacture their own needs, very few politicians will stand still and let that happen without the government getting their slice of the pie..

Jacques Fresco never explained how someone would come to my house and clean out my stopped toilet. Although, it was explained to me by another person that there would be automated machines that would take care of this and similar chores and that there would be other machines to retrieve the first sewer cleaners if they broke down. Eventually, self cleaning sewer pipes would be discovered and another machine would install them. Then everything was all hunky-dorey. Now, if you would just produce the machines that will build this new society, all the structures, the infrastructure, and control the myriad personalities that make up any societies where there is more than two people, you may get more people to believe in a set on our azz and get everything for nothing world....Maybe Jacques Fresco has those machines stored in one of his futuristic warehouses somewhere in Florida.... Sounds like a cross between 1984, THX1100, Brazil, and Animal Farm......

Star Trek is/was not a resource based economy. They used 'credits', a electronic system that deposited 'credits' to one's account. It was used inter-galactically, even the Klingons and the Romulins used the system.

I used to jokingly respond to the 'you wouldn't steal a car' copyright propaganda with "I wouldn't steal one, but if a mate said he could burn me a copy of his car I'd take him up on it". Seems less of a joke now.

Actually, I did get sued over a car part. In another life, I used to be a coachbuilder before the government of California made it too expensive to be involved in that trade.I hand formed sheetmetal in the construction of automobile bodies.

A customer brought in a semi-classic vehicle, a short run automobile that was old enough to be near classic but new enough that some well established dealerships may have replacement parts. I put out a request for a replacement panel on 'Partsfinder' and ironically, a dealer 2 blocks from my shop had the part.

I went to the dealer to see about the part and, he, knowing about it's scarcity, wanted an exorbitant price. It would be cheaper to make the part myself and I undertook the task to do so.

A few days later, one of his employees stopped by my shop and saw that I had handbuilt the part and mentioned this in casual conversation to his boss. The next thing I know I was served with a cease and desist order and a court summons.

To make a long story short, the dealer was attempting to sue me in the name of the auto manufacturer copyright and design infringement. When it came out in court that he was angry that I didn't purchase the part from him at the wildly elevated price, the judge threw the case out stating;

1] He had no foundation to represent the auto manufacturer, 2] He was suing to gain losses he never occurred, 3] His suit was a form of malicious revenge and he was lucky that I hadn't filed a cross suit for that he would have accepted. 4] The judge could find nowhere in the patent laws where someone cannot make a replacement part for a damaged item. If that were the case, every aftermarket company in the world would be put out of business...

He then stated that there were further problems with his suit and that he would hold them back for use in the event that the dealer attempts to reopen the suit in his or any other court.